Infernal is an implementation of covariance models (CMs), which are statistical models of RNA secondary structure and sequence consensus. You give Infernal a multiple sequence alignment of a conserved structural RNA family, annotated with the consensus secondary structure. The "cmbuild" program builds a statistical profile of your alignment. That CM can be used as a query in a database search to find more homologs of your RNAs (the "cmsearch" program). You can also use a CM of a representative alignment of your sequence family to create a larger consensus alignment of any number of RNAs (the "cmalign" program). Infernal is the software engine underlying the Rfam RNA database (http://rfam.xfam.org/).
To obtain Infernal releases, please visit eddylab.org/infernal.
To participate in Infernal development, visit us at github. Infernal development depends on the HMMER software package at github. and the Easel library, also at github.
% wget http://eddylab.org/software/infernal/infernal.tar.gz
% tar zxf infernal.tar.gz
% cd infernal-1.1.5
% ./configure --prefix /your/install/path
% make
% make check # optional: run automated tests
% make install # optional: install Infernal programs, man pages
% (cd hmmer; make install) # optional: install HMMER programs
% (cd easel; make install) # optional: install Easel tools
Executable programs will be installed in /your/install/path/bin
. If
you leave this optional ./configure
argument off, the default prefix
is /usr/local
.
Files to read in the source directory:
- INSTALL - brief installation instructions.
- Userguide.pdf - the Infernal User's Guide.
To get started after installation, see the Tutorial section in the Infernal User's Guide (Userguide.pdf).
The tarball way, above, is a better way to install Infernal (it includes a precompiled Userguide.pdf, for example), but you can also clone our github repo. You need to clone the Infernal, HMMER and Easel repositories, as follows:
% git clone https://github.com/EddyRivasLab/infernal
% cd infernal
% git clone https://github.com/EddyRivasLab/hmmer
% git clone https://github.com/EddyRivasLab/easel
% autoconf
and to build:
% ./configure
% make
Our git workflow includes two main branches:
- master is the stable branch for Infernal releases
- develop is the Infernal development branch
To build the most recent official release, currently v1.1.5, you'll want to checkout the corresponding tags from the HMMER and Easel branches.
% cd infernal
% cd hmmer
% git checkout infernal-1.1.5
% cd easel
% git checkout infernal-1.1.5
To contribute to Infernal development, you want to be on the develop branches. If you want to send us a pull request on GitHub, please base your changes on our develop branches.
Visit our issues tracking page at github.